“The Path Forward” Follows Those Who Pursue Peace
The Path Forward, a much-needed documentary co-directed by Julie Cohen(RBG), an American Jew, and Mo Husseini, an American Palestinian, is a breath of fresh activist air. At just under 40 minutes, this short film movingly memorializes the dead of Oct. 7 and the ensuing Gaza war.
Just as importantly, The Path Forward is laser focused on the living who are determined to break the “cycle of incitement, hatred, violence, revenge, rinse and repeat.” By featuring Israeli and Palestinian activists working together, this film provides an alternative to the poisonous, polarizing rhetoric polluting too many college campuses, public squares, and political backrooms.
The Path Forward opens with scenes from a rally. Participants chant “Peace, Shalom, Salaam” while carrying a banner that reads: “Don’t Divide Us Because We’re Israelis and Palestinians. Muslims and Jews. If you must: divide us as those who believe in justice, peace, and equality and those who don’t. Yet.”
This documentary is dedicated to the basics: that “what happened on Oct. 7 is criminal”; that there are 7 million Israeli Jews and 7 million Palestinians who are not going anywhere; that peace can’t be forged by eliminating one group or the other; that “coexistence and peace should not be controversial”; that “the bereavement of the other” must be seen; and that “people are so much better than our government.”
The peacemakers highlighted here are not starry-eyed idealists. Rather, they have skin in the game, and most have endured heartbreaking losses and trauma. Maoz Inon’s parents were both murdered on Oct. 7; his Facebook buddy, Aziz Abu Sarah, a Palestinian born in Jerusalem, immediately reached out with condolences and empathy, declaring that Oct. 7 was “an act of cowards.” According to Aziz, “those who were hurt were my people, too.”
Aziz was amazed that the grieving Maoz had the humanity to also grieve the loss of Palestinian lives in the post-Oct. 7th war. It took Aziz eight years after his brother died in an Israeli prison to be able to feel the pain of the so-called other. His transformation from rock-thrower and hater occurred when he began to study Hebrew and encountered Jews for the first time who were not soldiers or settlers. Those friendships made him realize that there were other choices and futures to be made and that he didn’t want to be “a slave to the soldier who killed my brother.”
Prior to Oct. 7, both Maoz and Aziz had used their entrepreneurial skills and spirits to bring Palestinians and Jewish Israelis in contact with and in dialogue with one another. Oct. 7 was a catalyst for them to redouble their efforts, to call for peace and justice everywhere they could, and to model co-existence and love in front of audiences of thousands.
Yael Braudo-Bahat, Jewish Israeli citizen and co-director of Women Wage Peace, lost her father to suicide as a result of the PTSD he experienced from the 1973 war. She remembers the excitement of Oct. 4, 2023 when hundreds of Palestinian women from the West Bank arrived in Jerusalem to kick off a new grassroots peace project.
Yael notes that it can “never again be pre-Oct 7.” Nonetheless, she and her Palestinian counterpart, Riman Barakat, credit the work done in that period with enabling them and others to “choose to be together” in this period of “great pain.” According to Riman, organizations such as Women Wage Peace and Feel Beit, an arts and culture group that brings Palestinians and Israelis together, have built communities that can “withstand the storm” thanks to “years of working together, of building the muscles, talking about extremely difficult things.”
Alon-Lee Green, a Jewish Israeli citizen, and Sally Abed, a Palestinian Israeli citizen, both leaders in Standing Together, were determined to makes spaces for Israelis and Palestinians to “be together”, “to grieve together,” and to get people organized around alternatives to the binary #StandwithIsrael or #StandwithPalestine. Speaking at Manhattan’s Anche Chesed Synagogue in March 2024, they shared the key components of their vision: “peace, end the occupation, ceasefire, bring all hostages back home alive.” For Green, such a plan is in the “self-interest of all Israeli citizens” and the “only path forward.”
And Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Palestinian American raised in Gaza whose childhood home was destroyed by an Israeli air strike, refuses the narrative that his dead family members are martyrs. Rather, he heals himself by working with Israelis who have also lost loved ones to turn their mutual heartbreak into “fuel for a different path forward.”
At one point in the film, Sally Abed acknowledges that “holding the pain” of both Israelis and Palestinians is profoundly difficult and challenging. As filmmakers, Cohen and Husseini meet this challenge. They also cinematically demonstrate Abed’s insight that “hope is an action.”
Maoz Inon insists that he and Aziz Abu Sarah “are not exceptional. There are many like us.” This viewer dares to hope that even if that’s not YET true, it may be so. By nurturing that action of hope, The Path Forward is a cinematic gift that needs to be widely seen and discussed.
Helene Meyers is the author of Movie-Made Jews: An American Tradition.
